Dear Editor:
Any intelligent reading of the Constitution does require some knowledge of history. The establishment of religion clause in the First Amendment, where establishment clearly meant the tax-supported endorsement of a particular religion or church by the state, reflected the intent of the founding fathers to separate these institutions of government and worship. The delegates to the constitutional convention were well aware of the long history of the union of church and state throughout Christian Europe that only added to the oppressive control of the people.
Nearly all of the American colonies had established religions, the majority of them embracing the Anglican Church in imitation of the mother country. Jefferson accurately characterized the intent of the religion clause when he explained that it aimed at erecting a wall of separation between church and state; even so, during the first 100 years and more of our history as a sovereign nation, this principle of separation was honored more in the breach than in the observance. Such violations were never legal or right.
Defenders of the absolute right of citizens to keep and bear arms ignore the qualifying clause, a well regulated militia. Even Robert Bork, who was rejected as a nominee to the Supreme Court by the Senate because his legal views were considered too far to the right, interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing militias to the states, not guns to individuals. The term apportionment in the Sixteenth Amendment is explained by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers as meaning that any taxing of the states as entities would have to be varied, based on the population and property value of the particular state, thus apportioned.
Denton May
Cortez